Network News

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Radio Waves

The Times is getting a total of $33.5 million from Univision and $11.5 million from WNYC in a three-way deal that will involve the purchase of the station's call letters and website and its transfer from 96.3 FM to 105.9 FM. In the process, WQXR will become a public radio station (and lose some of its signal strength, therefore reaching a slightly smaller audience).

WNYC is also launching a $15 million fund-raising campaign to support the purchase and running of WQXR, co-chaired by the pianist Emanuel Ax, who likened this move to "saving Carnegie Hall from the wrecker's ball."

I'm old enough to remember the demise of New York's WNCN (104.3) -- murdered by a hard rock format at the stroke of midnight many years ago -- and the near-death experience of WQXR is indeed sobering. I don't listen to WQXR much these days, although my car still has a button set to it for when I venture north, and I had found it steadily more annoying. I do hope that WNYC doesn't decide to emulate WETA in jettisoning anything that can't be whistled and allowing its announcers to treat the listeners as needing to be cajoled into tuning in. Maybe they'll even broadcast an occasional concert performance, an effort that WETA seems to consider not worth the trouble (or too much for the budget, which may be the case -- and isn't that pathetic?).

Meanwhile, in one of those cosmic coincidences, mention of WQXR reminds me of their long-defunct show "First Hearing," which offered unrehearsed critiques of new releases by a team of critics, one of whom was Edward Downes. No, not Edward Downes the conductor, but another Edward Downes. Funny-strange, no? (The show was syndicated, and I think WGMS broadcast it for several years. Talk about the good old days!)